On Sun, Oct 3, 2010 at 5:26 AM, Peter Damian <peter.dam...@btinternet.com> wrote: >
>We were talking > about very aggressive editors who know absolutely nothing of the subject, > and drive away specialist editors. > I see an equal proportion of very aggressive editors among the expert as well as the non-expert editors. Expertise does not necessarily mean a devotion to expressing all significant views and presenting them fairly. I have been involved a little with some articles in Wikipedia written by fully-credentialed experts --in one case with an international reputation and distinguished academic awards-- devoted to expressing their own peculiarly one-sided view of the subject. And there was a group of articles with several experts of established high reputation each taking the position that the other ones were hopelessly wrong. And not confined to Wikipedia, I think we all know of subjects in all fields where there are or have been people of high authority with peculiar views Indeed, this sort of bias infected the old Brittanica. I am not qualified to judge articles on philosophy on my own understanding of the material. I must ask whether you are so very sure that academic consensus will endorse your views on the articles mentioned that you would be able to write a replacement article, and ask for an RfC on it, and convince outsiders by reference to multiple understandable authoritative sources? I remind you that in the case of climate change, the scientific view was eventually supported, though it took several rounds at arb com. In the other direction, disputes between experts was one of the factors that killed (or almost-killed) Citizendium. -- David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
